Science often isn't - Are Most Scientific Results Bunk? - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"In a recent article, "Evaluation of Very Large Treatment Effects of Medical Interventions," in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Ioannidis and his colleagues combed through 85,000 medical interventions collected in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews seeking to uncover highly effective treatments. What they found is that treatments that supposedly produce very large benefits (odds ratio greater than 5) were almost always found initially in small studies and that when they were replicated in larger studies the benefits became relatively modest. In the end only one treatment was found to provide a major benefit, e.g., supplying extracorporeal oxgyen to premature babies with severe respiratory failure. Last year, Nature reported the shocking finding that nine out of 10 preclinical peer-reviewed cancer research studies cannot be replicated."
"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."
"“Free speech is important, but…” Oh no. Here we go again. This time, the issue is the criminalization of revenge porn. Much of the media narrative characterizes revenge porn as a new, runaway technological scourge too disruptive to be fall under any existing law, but that is simply untrue. A number of legal remedies against both vengeful exes and website operators already exist: civil tort actions, DMCA takedowns, criminal statutes against extortion, and even a federal law that could give the FBI authority to go after the sites...
The exploitation of women and children has always been the Trojan horse of internet regulation, from the now old-and-venerable Communications Decency Act of 1996, to more recent attempts like the ridiculous and ineffectual California ballot initiative Proposition 35 (which attempted to address human trafficking by, among other things, requiring registered sex offenders to disclose their internet handles to the authorities). At each turn, such efforts have been confronted with the inconvenient existence of the First Amendment...
The point is that a new criminal statute paves another way to put a human life on hold and a human body in prison... There are unintended consequences to overbroad laws, and failing to take that into consideration when advocating for increased criminal liability is irresponsible...
We do not need to choose between the internet and women, or between free speech and feminism. These are false and unnecessary dichotomies. Refusing to criminalize revenge porn would not make us misogynists. It would instead make us prudent."
